i-flex to power microfinance institutions

i-flex Solutions Ltd, on December 20, 2007 has announced that the Financial Information Network & Operations (FINO) is using its award winning* core banking product, FLEXCUBE® to help microfinance institutions address the challenges they face in processing large volumes of low value transactions.

Microfinance institutions around the world have developed innovative models to address the needs of the mass under-banked segment. In India, FINO's pay per use model allows microfinance institutions to use its sophisticated back office infrastructure to reduce transaction costs, scale their operations quickly and extend their reach.

The Company has a strategic alliance with FINO to provide a reliable and scalable processing engine. "With i-flex solutions and FLEXCUBE we have a partner and a core banking solution that are leaders in the field. With FLEXCUBE, FINO can provide microfinance institutions a range of services and products that can easily be customized to meet special requirements. In addition, FLEXCUBE's capability to handle millions of small-value transactions means we will be able to grow with microfinance institutions as they expand the scale of their operations," says Manish Khera, CEO, FINO.

FLEXCUBE has been configured to meet the special needs of microfinance institutions. For instance, it supports lending to self help groups or joint liability groups and can handle disbursements and or repayments for an entire group of borrowers as a single transaction. It is also able to handle daily, weekly or other Interest repayment schedules to cater to the needs of hawkers and small businesses.

"FINO has the vision and the capability to handle the volumes and the complexity that go with microfinance. Its approach is pioneering and frees microfinance institutions from the need to make large investments in Infrastructure. It thereby enables them to expand their businesses without restriction," says Deepak Ghaisas, Vice-Chairman, of the Company.

* IBS (UK) has ranked FLEXCUBE as the No. 1 banking solution in the world for five consecutive years 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 and 2006.